Amoretti

The volume included the sequence of 89 sonnets, along with a series of short poems called Anacreontics and Epithalamion, a public poetic celebration of marriage.

Amoretti has been largely overlooked and unappreciated by critics, who see it as inferior to other major Renaissance sonnet sequences in the Petrarchan tradition.

[4] However, other critics[weasel words] consider Spenser's sonnets to be innovative and to express a range of tones and emotions, and much more skillful and subtle than generally recognized.

Many critics, in light of what they see as his overworking of old themes, view Spenser as being a less original and important sonneteer than contemporaries such as Shakespeare and Sir Philip Sidney.

He eventually moves away from the constant transformation and self-absorption of the Petrarchan love situation, and towards the "peace and rest Spenser finds in the sacred world of marriage".

[9] The eighty-nine sonnets of the Amoretti were written to correspond with the scriptural readings prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer for specific dates in 1594.

Larsen suggests that perhaps Spenser was not at home during the days 19–24 of February and had no access to scriptural resources because most bibles published at this time were not very portable.

Larsen points out that Sonnet 53 suggests travel through its explicit descriptions of absence from the beloved: "from presence of my dearest deare exylde" and "So I her absens will my penaunce make".

Sonnets 76–89 correspond to the period from May 3 – May 17, the beginning of a new cycle of second lessons at morning prayer through the day before the Vigil of the feast of Pentecost, which fell on May 19.

In addition, he treats them with a smooth cadence and flow that tends to blur the distinctions within Petrarchan paradox rather than sharply separating the contraries.

"Spenser's working together of allusions and attitudes from both Petrarchist sources and scriptural loci intimates a poetic and a personal harmony, which in Amoretti becomes his ultimate preoccupation and goal”.

Examining the underlying structure of the sequence and its religious parallels provides one key to appreciating the richness and complexity of Amoretti and establishing Spenser as one of the most important sixteenth-century sonneteers.